An Age of Melodrama: Family, Gender, and Social Hierarchy in the Turn-of-the-Century Japanese Novel

At The End Of The Nineteenth Century And The Beginning Of The Twentieth, Japanese Fiction Pulsed With An Urge To Render Good And Evil In Ways That Evoked Dramatic Emotions. An Age Of Melodrama Examines Four Enormously Popular Novels From This Period By Interweaving Two Threads Of Argument. Using Approaches To Melodrama Developed In Western Literary And Film Criticism, It First Shows How These Texts Used Their Binary Morality To Construct A Semblance Of Moral Certainty In A Moment Of Social Transformation. It Then Examines How The Novels Responded To A Particular Set Of Ideologies Of The Family, Which The Japanese State Attempted To Use As An Instrument Of Control. The Melodramatic Novels Of The Meiji Period Generated A Plethora Of Alternative Family Models That Explored The Myriad Ways In Which Human Beings Could Connect In A Modernizing Culture. The Fictional Families In These Works Revealed The Ties Of The Family To The Nation, Delineated Traumatic Changes In Social Hierarchy, And Showed The Effects Of New Discourses Of Gender. These Powerful Portrayals And The Social Discourses That Surround Them Reveal That Melodrama Was A Central Mode Of Sensibility In Meiji Culture.--jacket. Introduction: Melodrama And The Family In Meiji Japan -- But There's Your Mother And Your Work : The Family And The Nation In Hototogisu -- A Jewel Shining In The Mud : Love And Money In Konjiki Yasha -- The Milk You All Drank : Gender And Social Aspiration In Chikyōdai -- I'll Be Doing The Giving : The Traffic In Women And Men In Gubijinsō -- In Place Of A Conclusion : Kokoro And The Age Of Melodrama. Ken K. Ito. Bibliographic Level Mode Of Issuance: Monograph Includes Bibliographical References (p. [295]-302) And Index. English